Sunday, 27 November 2016

The Green Paper on Work and Health will form the core of future government policy towards disabled people and those in ill-health, especially those of us unable to work. As you might imagine from a Green Paper that brings together Jeremy 'Privatise the NHS' Hunt and Damien 'IDS Mk II' Green, it's more than a little problematical, starting from the whole idea that to be healthy you need to be in work. Other highlights including forcing those in the ESA Support Group, those furthest from the labour market, including people with terminal illnesses, to engage in 'work related activity' or potentially face sanctions.

There is a government consultation on the Green Paper, with responses required by 11:45pm (!?!) on 17th February 2017.

Details of the Green Paper, in multiple formats, including signed, spoken word and Easy Read, with Braille available on request, can be found here, with details on the consultation available here. However, it appears it is only possible to respond to the consultation online and the only available format it is presented in is written English/HTML, which really is a particularly poor example to set.

(If you intend responding I would suggest copying the questions into a Word, or similar, document and preparing your answers offline).

Catherine Hale has some good thoughts on the implications of the Green Paper when viewed from the perspective of our human rights as disabled people: A Rights Based Response.

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

The UK workforce features a
prominent Disability Employment Gap. At the end of 2015 80% of non-disabled
people of working age were employed, for disabled people of working age that
figure was only 47%. Disabled people want to work, the problem arises in the
recruitment and retention of disabled people by employers and recruiters.
Disabled people face a systematic disadvantage in recruitment that has remained
constant across decades (attempts to fix this started in the 1940s).To use a starker phrasing, disabled people
face institutional disablism in recruitment and in the workplace.

In the 2015 General Election
the Conservative Party made a manifesto pledge to halve the disability
employment gap by 2020. Halving the gap seems to have been initially proposed by Scope in 2014.

Two Ticks to Failure

Positive About Disability, better
known as Two Ticks from its logo, was
the UK government’s scheme intended to encourage the recruitment and retention
of disabled people within the workforce. Introduced in 1990, and administered
through DWP’s Jobcentre Plus offices, Two
Ticks required employers to commit to five simple measures:

to
interview all disabled applicants who met the minimum criteria for a
vacancy

to
meet with disabled employees, at least once a year, to ensure all their
needs were being met

to
make every effort to ensure employees who become disabled could stay in
their jobs

to
ensure the disability awareness of all employees necessary to these
commitments

to
review the five commitments annually, plan how to do better and report
back to both employees and Jobcentre Plus

It rapidly became clear to
disabled people that Two Ticks was a
sham. The scheme was supposed to be administered by Disability Employment
Advisers at local Jobcentre Plus offices, however DEAs were overloaded with a
far higher client/adviser ratio than other Jobcentre Staff and the scheme was rarely
policed. The reality for disabled people was that employers would sign up to Two Ticks, add the logo to their headed
paper in order to impress their customers and the great and the good, and then
carry on not employing disabled people in just the same way they always had.

A Freedom of Information request to DWP in 2013 produced a list of slightly under 4,400 organisations then registered with
Jobcentre Plus as Two Ticks employers. However, this list appears to contain many
duplicate entries. Figures quoted in an article in Recruiter in June 2014
suggested around 8,400 organisations had been awarded the Two Ticks logo over the lifetime of the scheme. Government figures
state there were 4.9 million private sector employers in the UK in 2013, 99.9%
of these are Small or Medium Sized Employers (SMEs), giving Two Ticks a sign-up percentage of around
0.0017%, after a quarter of a century of existence, and without counting Public
Sector employers. The Recruiter
article additionally noted that less than half of FTSE 200 firms, theoretically
the leading employers in the UK, were Two
Ticks employers.

By the early 2010s Two Ticks was in thorough disrepute. In
January 2013, the then Minister for Disabled People, Esther McVey, announced an
inquiry into whether Two Ticks was
fit for purpose. In 2014 research by Professor Kim Hoque, of Warwick Business
School, and Nick Bacon, of London’s Cass Business School, published as Employer Disability Practice in Britain:
Assessing the Impact of the Positive about Disabled People ‘Two Ticks’ Symbol
in Work, Employment and Society showed
that, of companies displaying the Two
Ticks symbol, only 15%, less than one in six, carried out all five
commitments. 38% carried out only one of the commitments, and 18%, almost one
in five, carried out none of the commitments whatsoever, yet continued to
display the logo. Results were consistent across both Public and Private Sectors.

Taken together, over half of companies displaying the Two Ticks logo carried out either only one, or none, of the five
commitments. The Business Disability Forum criticised the research for using
Trade Unions to report back on the reality of Two Ticks, claiming only 15% of private sector employers with more
than 10 employees are unionised. However, the research itself noted that
percentages were consistent across both Public and Private Sectors and even a
cursory glimpse at the list of employers resulting from the Freedom of Information
request referred to above shows that the majority of Two Ticks employers are Public Sector organisations or otherwise
likely to be unionised. Professor Hoque identified the failure to police the
scheme as a fundamental reason for its failure.

In response to the research, even the DWP admitted Two Ticks had become ‘outdated’. However, they tried to suggest
that the issue was insufficient support for employers, rather than employers
wanting the kudos of the logo without being forced into any actual change in
their employment practices. The intent of the scheme, to support disabled
employees and applicants, was not addressed.

The Two Ticks requirements were hardly major commitments, most could be
incorporated into existing procedures for recruitment or annual appraisals, yet
the research showed that disabled people approaching a company displaying the Two Ticks logo, or employees who became
disabled while working for a Two Ticks
company, were more likely to find the logo was a façade behind which nothing
had changed, than to actually find the support the employer had publicly
committed themselves to. The research concluded that employers were using Two Ticks for ‘impression
management purposes’rather than to improve the employment, and employment conditions, of
disabled people.

Disability Confident, Or Not

In July 2013 the government
launched Disability Confident as the
latest in a line of DWP schemes intended to encourage employers to take on more
disabled employees. The focus of these DWP schemes has long been the subject of
criticism from disabled people. They typically feature supposed role-models in
a manner that almost inevitably strays into outright inspiration-porn and a
refusal to address the real-life experience of workplace disability
discrimination. Unlike previous schemes Disability
Confident was much higher profile, and much more blatant in its
inspiration-porn, using Paralympians, and prominent disabled ex-servicemen to
draw business people into its events. That this thoroughly denormalizes disabled
workers, and focusses attendees on how ‘inspiring’ we are is something
Disability Confident and its advocates have consistently refused to address.
Arguably worse was its oft-stated position that the reason for the Disability
Employment Gap was that employers are ‘embarrassed’ about disability. Any
mention of workplace disability discrimination has been notably absent from
Disability Confident material.

The Disability Confident scheme has been heavily criticised by disabled people from its launch onwards. At one point a Disability Confident event was invaded by Disabled People
Against the Cuts, and its 2015 declaration of Swansea as the first (and so far
only) Disability Confident City came in for widespread derision, with DWP
unable to explain what a Disability Confident City was, nor why Swansea
qualified.

Disability Confident has also faced
consistent criticism for its low level of sign-up, with the overwhelming
majority of organizations signed-up to it being either charities or organizations
with a business interest in the employment of disabled people. Despite Ian
Duncan Smith declaring
in a speech at the 2014 Conservative Party Conference that over 1000
organisations had signed up to Disability Confident, Disability News Service
showed
that the number signed by June 2016 was only 126, with perhaps as few as 40 of
those mainstream employers. Sign-up
of small and medium-sized employers was almost non-existent.

Originally due to run for only
two years, Disability Confident was extended in 2015 and in 2016 there were
rumours that it was due to be relaunched.

Ticked Off

After Two Ticks came under increasing criticism in 2013/14, DWP announced
that it would be replaced. Following publication of the Hoque/Bacon research, a
DWP spokesman was quoted by Disability News Service as saying: “We
are seeking to reform the accreditation to make it a more dynamic and effective
system.” It was also reported the revised scheme would see wider publicity,
different levels of accreditation, a more rigorous assessment process, and
improved information and guidance. It was also speculated there would be
provision for disabled employees to provide feedback on actual performance of
registered employers.

In July 2016 Disability News Service reported that there had been an unannounced replacement of Two Ticks by a
refocussed Disability Confident. By August 2016 DWP webpages were referring to
Disability Confident rather than Two Ticks, but there had been no formal launch
or publicity. A formal launch finally occurred on 2nd November 2016.

Disability Confident V2.0, Ticking
all the Wrong Boxes

When Disability News Service
pointed me at the relaunched Disability Confident in July 2015 and asked for my
opinion, my expectations were low, the scheme has consistently failed to
address the core issue of the Disability Employment Gap, recruiter and
workplace disablism. I was still unprepared for what I found.

Two Ticks had fallen into
disrepute because only one in five of the employers displaying the logo
actually lived up to their commitments, a failure that had been attributed to
the lack of active policing. DWP’s solution to this is to slash the commitments
needed in order to display the new logo, and to remove any pretence of
monitoring.

Under the new Disability
Confident Level 1, ‘Disability Confident
Committed’, employers can now display the new Disability Confident Employer
logo by making only a single commitment not already required by law, to interview
qualified disabled applicants, and no one will check them on it.

Under the new Disability
Confident Level 2, ‘Disability Confident
Employer’, employers make several more commitments, and again no one will
check them on it. However, the majority of these commitments would be considered
‘reasonable adjustments’ under the Equality Act 2010, and employers are
required by EA2010 to make reasonable adjustments for disabled employees or
potential employees, unless they can show that these are not reasonable.
Disability Confident is allowing employers to declare themselves Disability
Confident Level 2 employers by committing to do no more than they are already
legally required to do. And having seen what is considered a Level 2
commitment, it follows that Disability Confident Level 1 is effectively being
granted for committing to do less than is required by law.

Disability Confident Levels 1
and 2 combined appeared roughly equivalent to the original five Two Ticks
commitments, so I initially hoped that Level 3, ‘Disability Confident Leader’, would represent a step forward over
Two Ticks. I was wrong. Level 3 is available simply by getting an external
organisation to check your implementation of Level 2. While this could be a
valid audit carried out by a specialist disability access advisor, that isn’t
actually required. Level 3 accreditation can also be granted by any disabled
people’s user led organisation (a DPULO), or by any other Level 3 organisation.

To reduce it to its most absurd possibilities, one organisation could be
audited at Level 3 by a DPULO that knows nothing about disability employment issues, say
one focussed on disability sport, and that organisation could then go on to
audit every other Level 2 company in the country and accredit them at Level 3,
without any of them ever coming into contact with anyone who understands the
issues faced by disabled people in the workplace. There is an additional
requirement to display ‘leadership’, but this can be satisfied by ‘networking’,
which is a necessary element of several Level 1 or 2 requirements.

Overall, it is as though
someone looked at Two Ticks and said ‘this is how it’s being abused, how do we
legitimise that behaviour?’

And of those 2014 predictions
for what the revised scheme would feature:

·Wider
publicity: So little publicity people thought the relaunch had been
cancelled

·Different
levels of accreditation: Provided, but by splitting up the existing
commitments rather than extending them

·More rigorous
assessment: Replaced by self-assessment

·Improved
information and guidance: Discussed below

·Feedback
from disabled employees: Completely absent

The Disability Confident Commitments

A side by side presentation of
Two Ticks, the two new levels of Disability Confident and legal (Equality Act 2010,
EA2010) requirements is revealing. The original text has been paraphrased to
cut multiple pages down to a manageable format.

Two
Ticks

To establish a baseline, Two
Ticks is first considered separately from Disability Confident.

Two Ticks

EA2010

Commentary

Interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria

Applicants cannot be excluded on the basis of
disability alone

This was notoriously unpoliceable, companies simply
claimed disabled applicants did not reach the minimum criteria.

Meet with disabled employees to ensure needs are met, at least once a
year

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

A standard annual performance review could be
claimed to meet this

Retention of employees who become disabled

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

In many cases exactly the opposite happened,
disabled employees were forced out even in companies displaying Two Ticks

Ensure employee disability awareness

Employers are liable for the actions of their
employees if these result in disability discrimination (either direct or
indirect) and they fail to address it

Easily addressable during induction, but rarely
done.

Review the five commitments annually

Not required by law, however not monitoring
performance relevant to employment law is a business risk

The disrepute of Two Ticks shows the danger of a
slow decay away from unreviewed commitments

Disability Confident Committed (Level 1)
Based on observed behaviour in relation to Two Ticks, in particular the
tendency to do the minimum possible, Level 1 of Disability Confident is likely
to be the level pursued by the overwhelming majority of applicants. The first table
therefore compares the mandatory L1 commitments with the five Two Ticks
commitment.

Disability
Confident L1, Mandatory

Two Ticks

EA2010

Commentary

Ensure therecruitment
process is inclusive and accessible.

Interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria

Discrimination is unlawful. Disabled employees are
entitled to reasonable adjustments as and when needed

This amounts to ‘obey the law’. See Comment 1.

Communicate and promote vacancies

Ditto

Disabled people are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

Incredibly vague. See Comment 1.

Offer an interview to disabled people

Ditto

Applicants cannot be excluded on the basis of
disability alone

This is notoriously unpoliceable. See Comment 1.

Anticipate and provide reasonable adjustments as
required

Meet with disabled employees to ensure needs are met, at least once a
year

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

‘Anticipate’ is very good. But again this is ‘obey
the law’

Support existing employees who acquire a disability,
enabling them to stay in work

Retention of employees who become disabled

Ditto

Good. But again this is ‘obey the law’

Not required

Ensure employee disability awareness

Employers are liable for the actions of their
employees if these result in discrimination

You can claim Disability Confident L1, yet have
staff with no disability awareness training

Not required

Review the five commitments annually

Not required by law, however not monitoring
performance relevant to employment law is a business risk

The disrepute of Two Ticks shows the danger of a
slow decay away from unreviewed commitments

Comment 1: The initial three
requirements largely merge into one overall process of recruitment: Advertise
the job, make the process accessible, interview disabled applicants. Arguably
this is no more than Two Ticks required, if a little clearer on what the
process involves. However, during the Two Ticks era “Your CV didn’t meet our internal
requirements” was a notorious excuse for companies who didn’t want to follow
through on their commitments and interview disabled applicants and was almost
impossible to challenge. There is nothing here that would prevent that
being true of Disability Confident.

Disability
Confident L1, Optional

Two Ticks

EA2010

Commentary

Offer Disabled People at least one of the activities
below:

Most implied by: Interview all disabled
applicants who meet the minimum criteria

Applicants cannot be excluded on the basis of
disability alone

It would
be illegal to exclude disabled people from any of these.
See Comment 2

Work experience

Ditto

Ditto

See Comment 2

Work trials “this is a way of trying out a potential
employee”

Ditto

Ditto

See Comment 3

Paid employment (permanent or fixed term)

Ditto

Ditto

See Comment 2

Apprenticeships

Ditto

Ditto

Ditto

Job Shadowing “lasts between half a day and 2 days”

Ditto

Ditto

Ditto

Traineeships (i.e. sub- apprentice level)

Ditto

Ditto

Paid or supported internships

Ditto

Ditto

Ditto

Student Placements

Ditto

Sector-based work academy placements

Ditto

Ditto

Ditto

Comment 2: These options collapse to a general ‘be
willing to employ a disabled person’, but don’t require that to be carried
through. The requirement to do this is already imposed by the Equality Act
2010. The requirements as written could be satisfied by a 15yo doing work
experience, a ½ day job shadow, or employing a disabled contractor for any
length of time, even an hour. Most relate to entry level positions, there is
little or no focus on employing disabled people in experienced/professional/managerial
positions.

Comment 3: “this is a way of
trying out a potential employee” is a disturbing re-interpretation of the
intent of a work trial, which is normally understood as an opportunity for a
disabled candidate to confirm to themselves that they can manage the job
without health consequences. This can be read as a disabled recruit facing an
additional pass/fail test compared to a non-disabled recruit, which would be direct
disability discrimination counter to EA2010.

Conclusion: Disability
Confident Committed (Level 1) mandates that companies should offer to interview
disabled people, and in addition that they should provide reasonable
adjustments and not dismiss staff who become disabled (both already required by
law). But the requirement to actually employ disabled people is optional, and can
be passed by saying you would do so. Even if the requirement were made
mandatory rather than theoretical, it could be trivially passed without
permanently employing any disabled person.

In comparison to Two Ticks,
the need for training staff in disability awareness and the requirement for an annual
review of processes have been dropped.

Almost every commitment under Disability
Confident Committed is already legally required by the Equality Act 2010. Employers are therefore being offered a government sponsored logo attesting
what good disability employers they are for simply for offering to interview disabled people.

Disability Confident Employer (Level 2)

Level 2 is divided into two
themes, Recruitment and Retention/Development. The themes, and their mandatory
and optional requirements are analysed in separate tables. The requirements here
are condensed down from some 20 pages of bulleted text, similar in appearance to
Powerpoint slides.

Theme 1: Recruitment

Recruitment,
Mandatory

Two Ticks

EA2010

Commentary

Actively look to attract and recruit disabled people

Interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria

Applicants cannot be excluded on the basis of
disability alone

As L1

Provide an inclusive and accessible recruitment
process

Ditto

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

As L1. Still legally required.

Interview all disabled people who meet the minimum
criteria

Ditto

Applicants cannot be excluded on the basis of
disability alone

As L1

Flexible assessments so disabled applicants can
demonstrate they can do the job

Ditto

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

Reasonable adjustments, it’s the law!

Make reasonable adjustments as required

Ditto

Ditto

As L1. Still legally required.

Encourage suppliers and partner firms to be
Disability Confident

New

This is new and actually quite good.

Ensure employees have disability equality awareness

Ensure employee disability awareness

Employers are liable for the actions of their
employees if these result in discrimination and
they fail to address it

Teach equality, or face the consequences.

The mandatory elements of the
Level 2 Recruitment theme are essentially a repeat of Level 1 in slightly
greater detail.

Recruitment,
Optional

Two Ticks

EA2010

Commentary

Provide at least one of the activities below:

Most implied by: Interview all disabled
applicants who meet the minimum criteria

Applicants cannot be excluded on the basis of
disability alone

See Comment 4. Still legally required to be open to
disabled people.

Work experience

Ditto

Ditto

Work trials

Ditto

Ditto

Wording remains problematical.

Paid employment (permanent or fixed term)

Ditto

Ditto

Apprenticeships

Ditto

Ditto

Traineeships

Ditto

Ditto

Paid or supported internships

Ditto

Ditto

See Comment 5

Advertise vacancies in disability media

New

Assumes disabled people read ‘disability media’.
Most won’t. I have never heard of several of the proposed venues.

Engage with JCP, Work Choice providers or DPULOs for
support

New

Just contacting your local JCP appears to be a pass.

An accessible environment for staff and customers

Meet with disabled employees to
ensure needs are met, at least once a year

There is a presumptive duty on all organisations to
provide accessible services. Disabled staff and customers remain entitled to
reasonable adjustments as and when needed.

See Comment 6

Otherwise encourage disabled people to apply

New, but so, so woolly.

“We put a job
ad for disabled people in a locked filing cabinet in the cellar behind a door
saying ‘beware of the panther”

Comment 4: The intention is obviously that this should be
applied in relation to disabled recruits, as at Level 1, but the wording in
Level 2 doesn’t actually say that. Given the known history of abuse of the Two
Ticks criteria and the switch to self-assessment, this is incredibly naïve. The
concerns noted at Level 1 remain. In addition, the “one or more of” structure
creates an either/or potential between being willing to employ disabled people,
and having an accessible workplace. Disabled people, of course, require both.

Comment 5: Level 1 describes a
‘supported internship’ as for a disabled person still in education, Level 2
describes it similarly, but adds “whose disability is such that they need
special support, often including a support worker or work coach to help them in
the workplace”, which would surely be just as relevant at Level 1. Level 2 goes
on to say: “Supported internships do require time and commitment to set up, so
might be most appropriate for a larger employer” Is this trying to talk people
into providing them, or out of providing them? Additionally, it creates a
presumption that disabled people who require support workers are not employable
by small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs). It also seems unaware that support
worker costs are potentially covered by Access to Work. (Or is deliberately not
raising it).

Comment 6: Putting accessibility in the
options mean it is possible to be awarded Disability Confident Levels 2 and 3 with
an inaccessible workplace. This is also internally contradictory with Level 1,
where provision of reasonable adjustments is a mandatory requirement. An
accessible workplace is perhaps the most common of all reasonable adjustments.

Conclusion: An accessible workplace
is not explicitly required at Level 1, and optional at Level 2. DWP are clearly
working on a very different definition of Disability Confident than any the
disabled community would adopt. Where requirements overlap from Level 1, the
same concerns raised there apply, but the wording of Level 2 is oddly different
in places, with the employment provisions not actually specifying a disabled
person in most places, which technically means an auditor could not demand that
be met.

Disability Confident also appears to be functioning on a perception that
disabled people and the workforce are separate entities, with the suggestion
that jobs must be advertised in disability specific media to reach disabled
people.

Theme 2: Retention and
Development

Retention,
Mandatory

Two Ticks

EA2010

Commentary

Promote a culture of being Disability Confident

Ensure employee disability awareness

Disability Confident’s culture of inspiration-porn is
not going to help.

Support employees to manage their disabilities or
health conditions

Meet with disabled employees to
ensure needs are met, at least once a year

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

See Comment 7.

Ensure there are no barriers to the development and
progression of disabled staff

Ditto

Allowing such a barrier to exist would be disability
discrimination.

Credit given for not breaking the law. See Comments 8
and 9

Ensure managers are aware of how they can support
staff who are sick or absent from work

Ditto

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

Not actually disability specific. Very easy for this
to slip into harassment.

Comment 7: There is a long
history of disabled people being penalised for admitting disability, up to and
including summary dismissal. Similar persecution has also followed calls for
disability related improvements, requests for reasonable adjustments, or just
adherence to equality law. Disabled people are well aware of this and there is
a considerable body of advice urging disabled workers not to acknowledge
disability unless absolutely necessary. These are points where Disability
Confident is absolutely required to address the history of workplace disability
discrimination in order to allow the employer to understand the reluctance to
engage they are likely to encounter. It does not, for what can only be presumed
to be its ongoing politically-motivated insistence that workplace disability
discrimination does not exist.

Comment 8: “This could
include: encouraging disabled staff to be ambitious and seek progression in the
workplace, including increasing hours”.
This is further evidence of a profound disconnect in Disability Confident’s
understanding of disability. Many disabled people have limited energy and may
struggle to complete even part-time hours. Linking advancement to increased
hours creates a presumption that actively links ability and promotion to
endurance/energy, even though this would be constitute discrimination under
EA2010 if not actively required by the position.

“including increasing hours”
therefore makes no sense from a disability perspective. However, it makes
complete sense as an ideologically driven inclusion related to DWP’s initiative
to force people in receipt of Universal Credit to increase their hours if not
in full time working. So far as Disability Confident is concerned, it appears
ideology trumps legality.

Comment 9: “monitoring, whether formally or informally, progression rates for
disabled staff and ensuring they are in line with general progression rates”
This is actually a very good suggestion, though of course it should be done for
every minority group. For this purpose ‘progression’ would necessarily include
progression of salary.

Retention and
Development, Optional

Two Ticks

EA2010

Commentary

Provide at least one of the activities below:

Mentoring and support networks

Meet with disabled employees to
ensure needs are met, at least once a year

Presumes a large enough firm to facilitate this. Does
not discuss need for mentors to be disability aware.

Disability awareness training as part of induction

Ensure employee disability awareness

Employers are liable for the actions of their
employees if these result in discrimination

See Comment 10

Keep staff informed on mental health issues

Ensure employee disability awareness

Ditto

See Comment 11

Occupational health services

Meet with disabled employees to
ensure needs are met, at least once a year

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable
adjustments as and when needed

See Comment 12

Identify and share good practice with business
partners

New

New and good, but not an excuse to not provide the
other options.

Provide HR staff and recruiters with Disability
Confident training.

Ensure employee disability awareness

Employers are liable for the actions of their
employees if these result in discrimination

See Comment 10

Comment 10:
Confusingly, Disability
Awareness training of all staff is mandatory under the Recruitment theme,
but
training of new staff during induction and ongoing disability training for HR staff are both optional under the Retention
and
Development theme. You cannot train all staff unlesss you also train new staff, while HR staff have an absolute professional need to
understand the current law around disability and employment. How can a
company be Disability
Confident if its HR staff do not know the law?

Comment 11: “guiding staff to
information on mental health and well-being in the work place can help them
identify the symptoms and know how to support their team members and colleagues.”
This is frankly disturbing in its call for staff, and particularly supervisors,
to engage in amateur psychological diagnosis and/or treatment.

Comment 12: Employees and
managers require OH advice to provide appropriate guidance on how disabled
staff might be supported. It is impossible to be Disability Confident without that
professional support.

Conclusion:Over and beyond my normal criticism of
Disability Confident; writing process documents, and conducting audits based on
them, is somewhere I have extensive professional experience. The Disability
Confident requirements defining how to reach each of Levels 1, 2 and 3 are
dreadful. They are unclear, inconsistent, and utterly riddled with loopholes and contradictions.
They make Two Ticks look like a model of good practise.

To illustrate just how badly the Disability Confident criteria are written, you
can be awarded Disability Confident Leader
(Level 3) with no disabled employees and an inaccessible workplace after being assessed by a DPULO with no experience in employment issues.

So What is Actually New in Disability Confident?

There are elements of Disability
Confident that are new in comparison to Two Ticks, however they are largely
peripheral. The principal change is one of focus, from simply prescriptive to
an attempt to educate, unfortunately this isn’t actually particularly good, or
founded on any deep understanding of the issues disabled people will encounter
in the workplace. Worse, it attempts to both prescribe and educate in the same sentence,
with the result that the requirements are obfuscated, or defined so loosely as
to be useless. The three level documents should have been divided into separate
“You must provide” and “This is how” sections.

Beyond that, the new elements consist primarily of trying to tie the Two Ticks
element of Disability Confident into the wider Disability Confident programme.
Being a model of good practise is valuable, but should not have the potential
to free an employer from, for instance, providing an accessible workplace, which
the current requirements allow.

Tallying Disability Confident
against Two Ticks, we see that even at Levels 2 and 3 (the only difference is
external assessment), requirements have been loosened, rather than the promised
tightening. Many elements that were required under Two Ticks, for instance accessible
workplaces, are now optional under Disability Confident, or only required at
Level 2/3, but the poor layout makes this almost impossible to realise with
anything less than a systematic point by point comparison.

How Do We Fix This?

It would be simple to rework
Disability Confident into a workable Two Ticks replacement. One that addresses
the weaknesses Two Ticks revealed rather than shying away from them. Most of
the requirements make some sort of sense, but the structure they are assembled
into allows employers to exploit the label with no intention of changing. This
is not simply a theoretical concern, many of us have worked through active discrimination
at companies with Two Ticks accreditation and I was recently shown an employer
email saying (paraphrased) “We said we’re committed to interviewing disabled
people, we’ve actually got one, how do we get out of it?”

As a general principal, we need
commitments that actually mean something. No logos without actual disabled
employees, no logos for doing what is already required by law, no logos for
untrained staff and inaccessible premises. We also need three specific changes:

·Meaningful Requirements: Ones that do not allow routes through them that leave
the workplace or its management and recruitment processes inaccessible. The
optional elements need to be urgently revised so that only features that not
all firms will offer remain optional.

·Auditable Requirements: The wording of the Disability Confident requirements
is unclear, mixing advice with requirements in the same sentence. This makes it
more difficult to judge what the requirement actually is. This affects both the
employer trying to make the change and the auditor trying to confirm that they
have actually done so. This can be accomplished be rewriting the documents to
split advice and requirements into separate sections.

·Audited Awards:
Two Ticks fell into disrepute because it was not audited. That lesson is clear.
A replacement that dumps the audit requirement is not fit for purpose. Disability
Confident is only audited at Disability Confident Leader (Level 3), and even
that does not require appropriately trained auditors. Disability Confident
Committed and Disability Confident Employer are not audited at all, prior
experience says without this the scheme will again fall into disrepute. So we
need auditors. Auditors need independence, training, and a clear set of
requirements against which to conduct the audit.

DWP is the driving force
behind Disability Confident, it was the failure of DWP DEAs to conduct audits
that led to Two Ticks falling into disrepute. DEAs are no longer an appropriate
solution for auditing Disability Confident, DWP has slashed their numbers and
even a recently announced increase will not restore numbers to the previous
total, which was already inadequate. If DWP wants to increase the employment of
disabled people, but does not have the staff to audit its own scheme, then
perhaps the solution is obvious – train disabled people as auditors.

Not So Disability Confident Conclusions

We were promised a stronger
scheme with increased external supervision, we have been delivered a weaker
scheme with (almost) no external supervision.

The replacement for Two Ticks
turns out to be worse in almost every respect. It is trivially easy to look at
the way that Two Ticks was abused and see that Disability Confident further
enables that abuse rather than preventing it. If Disability Confident is
trivially easy to abuse, then perhaps that was in fact its primary design
constraint. There was a telling comment from one of the architects of the
scheme in the DNS article on the launch ‘if we had asked them to do anything
more they wouldn’t have signed up’.

If we don’t demand meaningful change, then Disability Confident cannot bring down
the Disability Employment Gap, in which case what is the point in implementing it? The
question then becomes whether Disability Confident is meant to address the
employment of Disabled People, or the public and peer perception of employers?